Well we've made it to the third edition of The Warp Pipe, meaning that you all obviously don't hate me enough to have me shut down and sent back to the salt mine that is accountancy. The Sega fans obviously weren't very riled by my attacks on the once-beloved hedgehog, which could possibly mean that they've begun to understand just how incompetent the company is. We'll continue spitting venom at big companies this week – it might have been a few years since this company did the dirty to one of my favourite developers, but it still irritates me to this day.

There's also a little more retro flavour on the console side of things this week as we take a look at one of the most wretched movie license titles to hit the NES, and Sega's anime-inspired light gun peripheral from the Master System. Take off those rose-tinted glasses, because the past is not always as good as you remembered it.

We Created Worlds

Anyone know any corporate necromancers?

I've only been a follower of PC gaming for roughly 15 years, jumping on board the Doom bandwagon back in 1993. In that time I've seen many great things, but sometimes things happen that you just damn well don't like, and in my case, that was EA's treatment of Origin Systems in its later years. Origin Systems developed many of the best PC games of all time, as well as a bunch of guilty pleasures of mine, so I thought I'd dedicate this week's section to their memory.

Origin Systems was founded in 1983 by Richard "Lord British" Garriott, his brother Robert Garriott, his father Owen Garriott and high school pal Chuck Beuche after clashing with Sierra On-Line over royalty payments from Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. Divorcing Sierra had little effect on the quality of the Ultima series, with Ultima III: Exodus (a nice little nod to the split) considered one of the most influential games of all time, receiving ports to 13 different formats from computers to home consoles. The continued success of the Ultima games allowed Origin to explore many different genres outside the RPG. Early efforts included Space Rogue (precursor to Privateer) and Omega (an unconventional tank game). RPGs continued to be the company's bread and butter until the early 90s when Wing Commander hit the scene. Origin really hit its stride around this time, venturing into new territory with Wing Commander, Privateer, Ultima Underworld and Ultima VII, which is still considered to be among the best PC RPGs ever released.

Electronic Arts acquired Origin in 1992. Joining forces with EA meant Origin could undertake riskier, but more innovative ventures without the risk of bankruptcy. The increase in production values really began to show in 1994 with the release of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger. It was the most expensive game ever made at the time, due in large to its liberal use of live action sequences between missions starring talent such as Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell. Bigger budgets had their downside for Origin, as EA began to meddle in other projects, such as Ultima VIII: Pagan, whose expansion pack reached gold master stage before being cancelled by the publisher. Still, budgets climbed and Origin's games became more impressive, but a number of high profile disappointments (BioForge and CyberMage) led to further meddling from EA.

Ultima VII is still considered one of the best PC games ever

Ultima Online launched in 1997, and seemingly changed the company forever. It was the first MMORPG to reach 100,000 subscribers – quite a number considering the size and speed of the Internet at the time, and the alien concept of a subscription fee for a video game. The game had a number of teething problems (such as the assassination of Garriott's allegedly indesctructible Lord British character), but is seen as the game that opened the gate for the genre. Meanwhile, the offline version of Ultima was in dire trouble with development constantly being put on hold, and frequent staff and technology changes. Ultima IX went through about 4 different versions before EA forced the game's release for the 1999 holiday season. The game is often considered the nail in the coffin for Origin, shipping late with many bugs, missing features and half-assed 3D support.

Just prior to the release of Ultima IX, EA had announced that Origin would be focusing entirely on massively multiplayer games after the success of Ultima Online. However, EA would renege on the deal in early 2000, cancelling all of Origin's MMORPG projects (which included Privateer Online, Harry Potter Online and an Ultima Online sequel). Origin was being kept alive merely to support and expand Ultima Online. The brothers Garriott chose to leave the company around this time, forming a new developer called Destination Games (which was later bought by NCSoft). Ultima Online reached its peak in 2003 with 230,000 subscribers, and EA revealed that it had another online Ultima planned – Ultima X: Odyssey. Odyssey would be the first game in the series made without the involvement of the Garriotts, and would utilize the Unreal engine. EA wanted to move the Ultima X development team and Ultima Online support teams into its California operations, but many of the Ultima X team refused to make the move. On February 24, 2004, EA announced that they were closing Origin Systems and moving the remaining staff to its Redwood studios, yet four months later, they announced the cancellation of Ultima X, effectively ending the Ultima series and the last active Origin project. Ultima Online still runs to this day with an estimated 130,000 subscribers – at least half of which are believed to be Japanese.

Origin's games were sometimes too much for the hardware available

Origin Systems lived and breathed their "We create worlds" motto, with many of their games being extremely immersive experiences. Such immersion was not just contained within the game itself – many of Origin's big box PC games were always packed to the brim with bonus content that fit straight into the world you were playing in. One of my favourite Origin developed games was Crusader: No Remorse; in the box you'd find the game, a decent sized manual, a newspaper from around the time the game was set, a briefing sheet from the WEC's anti-terrorist division, a top secret document from the resistance and a reference card. Compare that to now, when the average PC game comes with a DVD in a paper sleeve and sod all else. There were often hidden links between games to reward curious fans – Crusader's newspaper makes mention of the SHODAN incident from System Shock, for example.

While Origin will always be remembered for Ultima and Wing Commander, they did develop and or publish a bunch of quality titles that failed to receive similar acclaim. Origin were always ahead of the pack when it came to visual details, storytelling and quality gameplay, and sometimes this got in the way – what good is a game if there's no hardware around that's powerful enough to run it. BioForge is a great action/adventure title that had pretty hefty hardware demands back in 1995 due to its rather complex 3D graphics. System Shock (published by Origin and developed by Looking Glass) was a majorly innovative first person shooter/RPG which was lost in the slipstream of Doom II in 1994, yet enjoys a lot of belated success today. Origin's will to innovate and break new ground was really what did them in – they went above and beyond what people could play at the time, and their conservative corporate owner reined them in as a result of low sales. With better support and guidance from EA, Origin could still be running today. Fortunately EA acknowledges the mistakes it made with studios such as Origin and Bullfrog, with its executives promising to provide newer acquisitions with the guidance and support they need.

Accessorise

Captain N, eat your heart out

Video game accessories have always been an interesting subject, particularly when one looks back at the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, which had some pretty unique peripherals on offer. I've decided to dedicate one of The Warp Pipe's occasional recurring sections to remembering certain video game peripherals. We'll start with something a little more familiar, but I assure you, as time goes on, we'll delve into more weird and wonderful things.

One of the hooks of the second generation of consoles was having arcade-like experiences at home. As many arcade games at the time used light gun peripherals, it was only natural that the same thing would make its way into the home. I have no doubts that many of you remember Nintendo's Zapper for the NES, so I thought I'd take a look at its superior Sega counterpart – the Master System's Light Phaser. Sega's gun was almost the polar opposite to the Zapper – while Nintendo's gun was cheaply made, clunky and bright orange, the Light Phaser was sleek, black and worked like a charm. The Light Phaser was modelled after the Zillion Weapon System used by J.J., Apple and Champ in the Japanese anime Akai Koudan Zillion, though funnily enough, neither of the two Zillion games Sega made utilized the gun (the first was a Metroid/Impossible Mission style action platformer, while the second was straight up action).

The NES Zapper may have supported a greater number of titles, but games made for the Light Phaser were of a higher standard. My personal favourite was Rambo III, which was loosely based on the 1988 film – players controlled the titular character with a near-unlimited supply of ammo, and were charged with rescuing Colonel Trautman and a bunch of villagers before taking on a Russian Hind. The Master System's port of Operation Wolf was also quite good, despite having lost a lot of the graphical flair of the arcade game.

Once You've Played It, You Can't Unplay It

Arnie practices a dance number with a pyjama-clad midget

We've been pretty positive this week on The Warp Pipe, which is something I'm generally not very used to, so I thought we'd close up with a section that's dedicated to some of the worst video games to grace our industry. 8-bit consoles and crappy movie license games go together like stink and poop, so this week I thought we'd take a look at one of the worst titles to grace the NES – Interplay's adaptation of Total Recall.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was box office gold in the early 90s, and video game adaptations of his action movies flowed freely, and Total Recall was no exception. Though the concept lends itself quite well to a video game, the product that Interplay released was like a steaming turd falling into my drink. It's almost baffling how the game could have been so bad given the quality of Interplay's output around that time, but a unforgiving development schedule meant that the game was released largely unfinished. But alas, the video gaming public of the time was young and stupid, and yet to figure out the simple equation of the time; game + movie license = steaming pile.

Total Recall bears the least possible resemblance to the film of the same name. Playing the first level lead me to believe that Total Recall is somehow related to being dragged into alleys by strange men with beards to fight midgets dressed up in purple pyjamas -can't say that was what Philip K. Dick had in mind with We'll Remember It for You Wholesale. Being less than four feet tall, these bearded midgets present quite a challenge for Arnie, resulting in quite a large number of kicks to the balls. Not only that, but Arnie appears to have become quite the Nancy boy when it comes to displays of fisticuffs with a left and right that couldn't even kill a fly. Once you get over being attacked by angry midgets, Arnie's foes tend to consist of deranged dogs and cats. Can't seem to remember that in the film, either. The game is only about half an hour long, but I'd rather be gutted and strangled with my own entrails than play the game for more than a minute ever again.

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Quote of the Week

New Atari CEO David Gardner had an odd choice of words concerning his company's future plans. "My goal is not to go head on with EA and Activision Blizzard – we're the terrorist organisation here. We're going to go much faster into the future than anyone else because we're small." How does being small constitute being a terrorist? Is Atari planning some devastating attack on Activision Blizzard at this year's E3? Perhaps anthrax in every tenth Madden 09 case? Atari is only small because greedy, out-of-touch executives destroyed the company through releasing lots of low quality console software based on things they thought were "cool" and "hip". Mark Ecko is not cool. Grafitti is not hip. Perhaps if you didn't let focus groups design your games, then you might have a hit.

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Next Week

Next week on The Warp Pipe, we might actually talk about things affecting the current gaming environment.